Call admission control (CAC) is a key element for providing quality of service (QoS) in wireless communication networks. Traditional call admission control techniques typically only address call level QoS because of the underlying circuit based network architecture. In contrast, emerging wireless technologies such as third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) wireless networks tend to be packet-switched rather than circuit-switched because the packet-based architecture provides for better sharing of scarce wireless resources.
CAC using a guard channel (GC) scheme is currently used in circuit-switched wireless cellular networks supporting voice calls. The GC scheme works well in minimizing blocked and dropped calls in circuit-switched networks. Other call admission control schemes have also been proposed over the years which have looked at call dropping and call blocking probabilities as the QoS parameters considered, but these schemes have failed to address the unique requirements of a wireless packet-switched network. As such, a need exists in the art for a CAC technique which can take into account some of the unique requirements found in packet-switched wireless networks.